Brain Cancer--the fight of her life

Fighting the Battle of Her Life

Dreams of Trisha Thurber, a young adult who had just bought her first home near Day Break, stopped abruptly almost two years ago when she discovered she had inoperable brain cancer.

Trisha started having trouble with her vision in November 2010. “When my head moved, my vision moved<” she said. “I had double vision. Then my mouth started going numb on the left side.”

“When I went to the doctor, he sent me to an opthalmologist who found nothing wrong with my eyes. He sent me to a neurologist who thought that I had M.S. or a tumor.

I had an MRI and from there I went to another doctor who specialized in M.S. It was not M.S...”

After making the round of doctors Trisha finally ended up at Huntsman Cancer Center and at the time they didn’t think it was a tumor, but by March she was throwing up, her double vision was worse and she was really sick. Her job wanted her to go out of town but she was too sick to go.

She went back to the neurologist who did another MRI and after finding out the results, said he had an opening for surgery in a few days. In April she had her first surgery---it was a grade 3 Anna Plastic Astrocytoma. Yes, brain cancer—inoperable.

In May she started chemotherapy and seven weeks of radiation with the severe nausea and vomiting that sometimes accompanies these treatments. . Chemo was five days on and 23 days off for She lost her hair, had to wear a patch over her eye and eventually quit her job. She had to move in with her mother.

She had an MRI every month and the original tumor stayed stable. But in April of 2012 her eye sight was worse. The MRI showed a growth in the front of her brain and in May of 2012 she courageously had another brain surgery. It was also inoperable. In June she underwent eye surgery but it wasn’t helpful.

In October, she is scheduled to have additional surgery but medial bills are mounting.
Her neighbors have scheduled a fund raising 5K run for her on September 29, 2012. Go to http://trotfortrisha.blogspot.com for more information and to find out how you can help.


February 3, 2013
Trisha has now been in the hospital for 3 1/2 weeks. The radiation that she had caused damage to her jaws and last November she was started having a difficult time chewing, eating or talking. Whe was unable to eat and they placed a feeding tube in her stomach, but then she developed pneumonia, was starting to get better, but now she has a new pneumonia that is making it difficult for her to breathe.